Quotes by José Martí
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Talent is a gift that brings with it an obligation to serve the world, and not ourselves, for it is not of our making.
There is happiness in duty, although it may not seem so.
He who uses the office he owes to the voters wrongfully and against them is a thief.
Culture, which makes talent shine, is not completely ours either, nor can we place it solely at our disposal. Rather, it belongs mainly to our country, which gave it to us, and to humanity, from which we receive it as a birthright.
Charm is a product of the unexpected.
The force of passion is balanced by the force of interest.
An insatiable appetite for glory leads to sacrifice and death, but innate instinct leads to self-preservation and life.
But love, like the sun that it is, sets afire and melts everything. what greed and privilege to build up over whole centuries the indignation of a pious spirit, with its natural following of oppressed souls, will cast down with a single shove.
In truth, men speak too much of danger.
The vote is a trust more delicate than any other, for it involves not just the interests of the voter, but his life, honor and future as well.
We light the oven so that everyone may bake bread in it.
Peoples are made of hate and of love, and more of hate than love.
Mountains culminate in peaks, and nations in men.
Like stones rolling down hills, fair ideas reach their objectives despite all obstacles and barriers. It may be possible to speed or hinder them, but impossible to stop them.
A selfish man is a thief.
The struggles waged by nations are weak only when they lack support in the hearts of their women.
Love is the bond between men, the way to teach and the center of the world.
A child who does not think about what happens around him and is content with living without wondering whether he lives honestly is like a man who lives from a scoundrel's work and is on the road to being a scoundrel.
Men are like the stars; some generate their own light while others reflect the brilliance they receive.
It is a sin not to do what one is capable of doing.
One is guilty of all abjection that one does not help to relieve.
To busy oneself with what is futile when one can do something useful, to attend to what is simple when one has the mettle to attempt what is difficult, is to strip talent of its dignity.
A grain of poetry suffices to season a century.
It is necessary to make virtue fashionable.
If I survive, I will spend my whole life at the oven door seeing that no one is denied bread and, so as to give a lesson of charity, especially those who did not bring flour.
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